Luigi Malerba: Il protagonista [The Protagonist]

malerba

The latest addition to my website is Luigi Malerba‘s Il protagonista [The Protagonist]. This is a novel narrated by a penis. It is not the first novel featuring a penis by a major twentieth century Italian novelist. Alberto Moravia wrote a novel called Io e Lui, published in the US as Two: A Phallic Novel and in the UK as The Two of Us. However, this one is narrated by the penis, owned by a man known only as The Boss, who lives in a third floor flat in Rome by the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps. The Boss tries his luck with women, using his radio ham hobby as a way of meeting them. Meanwhile, the penis is dissatisfied at being kept hidden away all the time and not being allowed to, as he calls it, go into the garden. It is certainly an amusing novel, with Malerba’s usual quirkiness, and confirms what most women knew, that men are controlled by their penis and use it to think with.

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